Early in "War Horse," in town at the Marcus Center through Sunday, a wild foal is penned within a paddock and sold.

It's an obvious if effective foreshadowing of what's to come, in which this foal grows into a spirited thoroughbred named Joey — before repeating his initial confinement, first as a haltered packhorse and then within the barbed wire crisscrossing No Man's Land, in the killing fields of World War I. | Jan. 8, 2014»Read Full Article(5)

Placed with an almost comical symmetry in the center of the walkway, perfectly aligned with both Monona Terrace's rooftop fountain and the Capitol dome in Madison, it conjures up strangely opposite impressions. On the one hand, it's like a giant tumbleweed, blown in by a freak storm. At the same time, I can't escape the way it echoes an alien spacecraft (especially with Wright's retro-futuristic building as a backdrop), like the one that landed on the National Mall in "The Day the Earth Stood Still." | Jan. 8, 2014»Read Full Article